Government - Not Bloggers - Leaking Info
Somehow this doesn't surprise me, but for all the gnashing of teeth by the Army over the potential security threat of milblogs it turns out the real threat is official Army websites.
Defense Tech founder Noah Shachtman, who now runs the tres gouge Danger Room blog for Wired, is on the case as he has been since the beginning:
"For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do.
"The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period."
More from Noah here.
-- Ward
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In the memoir of Hanns Joachim Scharff ,“The Interrogator,� Hanns details his experience as a WWII Luftwaffe Interrogator, his speciality was to Interrogate captured USAAF fighter pilots. Hanns states that it’s the senior officers who hold and more easily give up more information than the junior officers. In fact the senior officers would get into verbal sparring much more quickly allowing Hanns to glean important information. To keep a sercet, don't tell it to senior officers! Hanns stated he was able to run rings around senior officers.
Hanns states that the junior officers would hold to name, rank, & serial number much more strongly than the senior officers. Also, it was the fighter pilots, who gave up information soonest who left the interrogation reception for the POW camp soonest, and the fighter pilots who stuck to name, rank, serial number who stayed at the interrogation reception the longest and yet it is assumed by US military intellgence that if you left the interrogation reception soonest you kept your mouth closed, no you gave it up!
Senior Officers have a license to give out important information without fear of prosecution, while junior officers and enlisted are held to much higher standard and easier threat of prosecution. It's a double standard with a long history and I don't see it ever changing.
Hanns book is a very good read for any military type and I understand it is required reading for military interrogators. Hanns teaches the art of interrogation without torture, and gets the information!
Posted by: Steve Sola at August 18, 2007 08:29 PM